A dialogue between the natural vs synthetic world – David Fooks

I’m an Australian visual artist currently based on the uniquely beautiful island of Tasmania. Working across a variety of mediums and stylistic approaches, my work has always strongly gravitated toward depicting realism and emotion in portraiture. While my background in graphic design seems to inform the work through a different lens of colour, layout, and constant stylistic curiosity. ~David FooksThematically my work has focused on a dialogue between the viewer and the viewed, the natural vs synthetic world and that we are all bound by feeling elicited through perceived beauty. It is usually an instinctual process, which presents with its own movement, emotion and an open ended narrative.

I am currently working through a series of 100 ‘Quick & Somber’ portraits. Gathering photos provided by friends and family across social media platforms, sending ‘somber selfies’, which depict a more vulnerable, emotional state than the standard idealised version of themselves. These daily portraits are then filtered through my own emotional state in a series of quick and instinctual experiments, and re-posted across these platforms with the subject tagged. Opening up a deeper connection between the people involved, and their broader network of viewers. The work sets out to encourage openness in the discussion and communication of personal hardship, grief and depression, in the hope that we can more easily work through these difficult times by reaching out to our various networks, without the stigma of an ‘over-share’ or fear of social scrutiny.